Yes sounds ok to me and I was most likely around 750whr (Ac from the wall away from bms shutdown)
Or at a guess from me about 500whr DC or 5km at 100whr/km. (assuming my pack is still good for 16.5kwh/Ac after shutdown.

Anyhow I'm happy and I got to my house last night with 20% SOC the same as I did over one year ago .
Kurt

Definitely sounds like all is well in the battery department Kurt.
Canion just doesn't know where the bottom of the pack is 'Coz it never goes there would be my thought.
That doesn't mean folk should visit turtle any more than they really have to.
I'm with you... Avoid the bottom end and don't spend too long at the top end.

Just a comment on high SOC and Lithiums.
What is the best way to kill the battery in a laptop computer ? Leave it plugged in and fully charged.

Basically just described the environment and charge conditions of 99% of laptops. Some of the newer laptops actually have a battery health setting that only lets the laptop charge to 40% and then runs off AC. You can just take the battery out but you loose the UPS feature all laptops have.

Why this partial charge wasn't a option on all laptops years ago is beyond me.

After driving home through the Glass house mountains a few weeks ago in 43c heat. I was given some motivation to finally get around to tinting the windows on the Imiev.

Not that it was ever hot in the cabin. Even in that extreme heat the AC unit was icy cold. More to do with driving home often for 1 1/2 hrs with the sun low and to the west. So shining directly on the side of my face through the drivers side window. Not to mention the extra UV the interior is exposed to. So all round I thought tinting was a good idea.

The rear windows and hatch are tinted from the factory. So I just had the front doors tinted to match including the little side windows at the ends of the dash.

In addition to this as anyone with a Imiev would know the front window is HUGE!(well it's vertically very long anyhow) It doesn't have any factory tinting strip along the top. So I had a strip placed along the top of the front window. This has made a huge difference to glare and direct sun on you from above.

They did a nice neat job and everything was trimmed well. though I have one small moisture bubble on the passenger side window that apparently will vanish over a few days (if it doesn't they just said to take it back to sort that out)

Kurt

Last edited by offgridQLD on Tue, 25 Nov 2014, 11:26, edited 1 time in total.

If your vision is that bad that your having trouble seeing things through legally tinted windows then I think a optometrist appointment is a good idea.

Any organization that offers insurance will have a negative attitude towards tinting perhaps from dealing with the all the non legal (way to dark and reflective) tints being used.

Optical films and coatings do work. I have a bit of a interest in good optics and have several scopes, binoculars and telescopes along with camera gear. One set of binoculars lens treatment is that good it's amazing how there is almost zero glare in the afternoons almost looking head on to the sun. Switching back to a cheap clear lens set you can't even see anything in the conditions.

The difference driving with the sun on the side of your face for over 1hr is 100% obvious. Driving the same road at the same time in the clear window imiev I was feeling like the skin was frying off one side of my face . scrambling for a towel or something to place over the window. Same road similar time and heat in my ute with a quality tint and I didn't even think twice about the sun to my right.

It's very bright and sunny in QLD the majority of the time not to many gloomy grey winter days to worry about the 1% loss of detail in the shadows through your side windows.

Kurt

Last edited by offgridQLD on Wed, 26 Nov 2014, 03:21, edited 1 time in total.

Tinting is personal preference ?
I would agree that driver comfort,distraction,fatigue are factors often overlooked in the vision only 'view' on tinting.

I would note that I object to not being able to make eye contact through the side window of a vehicle about to pull out on you if the tinting is dark or conditions marginal and I won't try a courtesy let in to a vehicle in traffic if I can't see the driver. Their loss.

There are other ways that manufacturers can reduce the oven effect. I owned a SAAB one time that had specifically heat absorbing glass. You never suffered the cooked face or arm problem that Kurt points out can be a driver safety issue.

I really like the inbuilt tint of the iMiEV rear and back glass. I always try to park back to the sun.
I laugh when I recall the dealer offering to tint the rear window at least when I had refused a 'tinting pack' in the usual after sales accessory push.

Just thought I'd say hi having purchased an ex Better Place / Ausgrid 2010 iMiEV last week. So far so good, battery seems in good nic and mostly impressed with the car (as long as I'm inside or looking at it side on, lol). The car will just do local trips around Gosford area NSW. Would love to know about other iMiEV in the area if you know of any?

I gave a friend a drag race yesterday as I find the low speed acceleration surprisingly good so wanted to see how it compared in a race. I knew I wasn't going to win but just wondered how it was. He had a GTI Golf 2L DSG diesel in sports mode. Side by side, stationary start, I was only 2 car lengths behind him at 60km/h, about 5 car lengths by 80km/h at which point we ran out of road.

I am charging successfully just using the Jaycar 15A-10A RCD and have the Jaycar timer set to come on 11pm and off at 6am everyday as I'm on TOU rates. I have 10kW of solar however its on 60c gross for another 2 years, after that I might start charging the car with excess if its still not worth going off grid.

Cheers.

PS Big thanks to acmotor and another iMiEV owner John for their valuable advice.

zzcoopej wrote:
The car will just do local trips around Gosford area NSW. Would love to know about other iMiEV in the area if you know of any?

I visit shelly beach every couple of months to visit wife's parents. but I live a bit more north. (Newcastle) there was another Central coast iMiEV but they haven't been on the forums for a while and I can't find them when I searched the forums.

Over the Australia day weekend I had some time to pull the lead acid cells we inherited with the off grid house from the power room. I Replaced them with 400AH of Calb lifepo4. It makes for a much cleaner area to work around.

I didn't take the Imiev up that weekend or the following while commissioning the system. Now it's all settled in, balanced and seems to be running well. I will take the Imiev up there again starting this weekend.

I guess now I have to feel less guilty of sucking some power out of the house bank for the odd overnight EV top ups. Efficiency will be way up with lithium all round now.

The old lead acids that still perform ok but have mechanical terminal post corrosion damage I have started to recondition that aspect of them with the hope (if the reconditioning is successful) to locate them in the shed and dedicate them to overnight EV charging and perhaps some other simple non critical duties with the PIP4048 4kw inverter.

Out with the lead all 1.5 tons of it

In with the lithium 220kg of it. A few cable runs need tidying/Rerouting and conduit and it's finished.

Kurt

Last edited by offgridQLD on Mon, 02 Feb 2015, 11:47, edited 1 time in total.

I suggest the clamping would give better anti-bulge defence if the upper and lower clamps were positioned 1/6 to 1/4 of the way from the top and bottom of the cells. They are kind of wasted if they are close to the top and bottom since the cells can't bulge there anyway.

I worry that I should have used some kind of rigid plate to spread the load on the outside cells, in both the MX-5 and the monolith, but I settle for just not clamping them too hard.

I hope you plan to enclose the cells, and fuses, in a child-proof manner, so no-one can drop a metal object on their terminals. You've got a short-circuit capability of at least 20C (8000 amps) there. This is a very sensible requirement of Australian standards
AS/NZS 3000, Wiring Rules,
AS/NZS 4509, Standalone power systems (SPS),
AS 2676, Installation and maintenence of batteries in buildings,
AS 3011, Secondary batteries installed in buildings,
AS 4086, Secondary batteries for SPS.

Yes on 2nd thoughts I should have placed the clamps spread over the middle 2/3 of the cell wall. Given there is 3mm thick SS plate at each end I think it should be fine.

End plate . and perspex sheet in the background.

Yes regarding the exposed terminals. I did pick up a large section of perspex at a garage sale a few weeks back that is reserved for a cover/ lid. I just need to build a little hot wire bender from a old blow heater to shape it. For now I have the power room locked until next weekend.

All fusing is housed in a 3 gang DC disconnect enclosures. The 3x exposed lugs on the ev power BCU although all the one common polarity will have conduit all the way when the wires are rerouted.

Kurt

Last edited by offgridQLD on Mon, 02 Feb 2015, 11:42, edited 1 time in total.

Last night we did our usual Friday night drive to the sunshine coast hinterland. We arrived with 22% SOC and could have been a bit better but I was sitting at 100kph over the last few km of rolling country hills. 100kph is the speed limit for that stretch though most people drive it at 70 - 80kph as it's limited to conditions often wet / fog and it's twisty and steep climbs. As I was still on 30% and had a 4wd with aftermarket low beam lights (way to bright) on my ass I couldn't resist giving it some stick.

Anyhow I'm really happy with how the battery is going. I'm getting just the same range and SOC reading as the day I got the car.

Last night was also the first Imiev recharge on the new Calb lithium cells at the off grid house. I usually give the car a few KWh of charge when I arrive so it's not sitting all night at 20ish % SOC. In the past this would knock the lead acid down a little and you could see the voltage sag. It was great last night to see about 70A load (Imiev charger, wife took a shower - pressure pump and house general base loads) but the voltage was just under 53v

I topped the car back to about 35% charged and shut it down . The next day by the time we got up and had breakfast even in patchy cloud the PV had recovered Friday nights consumption and was on float at 10AM. So I put the Imiev back on charge and stopped it at 70% SOC. I could have easy filled it to 100% but I didn't want it sitting full overnight at 100%. I will top it of tomorrow for the trip home.

The calb cells on the house don't bat a eyelid at any loads I can throw at them and they recover so fast. A short bust of sun and they really make the most of it.

Sitting back now with about 93% SOC. All the lights are on in the house (little people around the house never turn them off) Tv is on and I'm not really watching it ...to lazy to find the remote...but you know what it doesn't really matter the Sun will fix up the electricity tab in the morning then fill my car up....thanks sun

offgridQLD wrote:
Last night was also the first Imiev recharge on the new Calb lithium cells at the off grid house. I usually give the car a few KWh of charge when I arrive so it's not sitting all night at 20ish % SOC. In the past this would knock the lead acid down a little and you could see the voltage sag. It was great last night to see about 70A load (Imiev charger, wife took a shower - pressure pump and house general base loads) but the voltage was just under 53v

Kurt

Just wondering the new EVSE I have have switches (ELV control type) to allow remote activation and deactivation and the top models have load management via ethernet port so you can dynamically change the charge rate. doesn't really apply to the i-miev since its onboard stops at 13amps, think bmw up to 32amps or model s. But is this a selling point/worth it to people with off grid to be able to stop charging or slow the charging rate down, by monitoring the house battery conditions ?

I think that being able to control the EV charger, assuming it's the major load (6+ kW) would be an important feature.

I note that if you were doing DC charging via a ChaDeMO like port), then you could even do the EV2G thing and reverse the power flow under unusual coconditions. It might even be more efficient doing a DC (solar battery and/or solar panels) to DC (EV pack) charger, though I imagine that any existing high power charger would be designed for higher than 48 V nominal, or even 96 V or 120 V nominal, so it would likely not be anything off the shelf. (Even granting that you would bypass the AC to DC part of anything off the shelf).

I think it would be a great feature, not just for the off-grid house, to be able to have the car charging automatically speed up and slow down to track the available surplus solar power. For those on a nett feed-in tariff, it would be good to soak up just the right amount of PV output, just the surplus that the house is not using for other things. That means your solar gets stored in the car, not exported for a low return. That also avoids paying for more expensive imported power when the PV output declines or other appliances in the house turn on.

Take yesterday for example. My house battery was on float when I switched the imiev charger on. So the solar chargers cover any loads on the battery to maintain the float voltage. Essentially keeping the net charge to the house battery at zero.

Though it's not always a smooth zero charge line across the day in float particularly if you have a large load to cover and patchy cloud rolling over.That was the conditions I had yesterday.So for the most part my 8200w of PV could easy cover the load. Though when a thick cloud covered the sun the PV output would drop and I would get negative current (power being taken from the house battery) followed by a burst of power as the cloud past. The chargers would ramp up to get the net charge balance back to zero then settle down.

So at the end of the day you still end up will a full battery just the road to get there is a little undulating.

I would say this is more of a issue for people with lead acid house banks as the goil is to spend the most time practical at 100% soc.I guess in effect it is a seriese of small micro cycles on the lithium cell ( not sure if of the impacts of that) it would be smoothend out if you had load management tied into your charge controller and evse. It wouldn't be to hard to implement with my controllers as they have two outputs
/inputs each that can be configerd to take advantage of features like this.

I might look into getting/building one as I only have the one evse and if it broke or I forget to pack it that would be very inconvenient.